Death in Kenya

by M. M. Kaye

  Drew smiled down at her. ‘You won’t be able to help yourself, darling. Not after that stuff you’ve just taken!’

  ‘Then I shall dream about it, and that will be worse. Tell me now.’

  But Drew only shook his head, and presently she fell asleep, and when she awoke the sun was high, and it was Mabel Brandon, red-eyed with weeping, who had brought her breakfast on a tray, and after putting a fresh bandage on her shoulder, helped her to dress.

  But Mabel would not answer her questions. She had only said: ‘She’s dead. She died at three o’clock this morning. Eden was with her. One should not speak ill of the dead.’ And she had gone away, blowing her nose vehemently and making no attempt to disguise her tears.

  The drawing-room had been full of sunlight, and Drew had been standing by the window looking out across the garden. He turned and smiled at her, and Victoria said unsteadily:

  ‘Mrs Brandon says she – she is dead.’ Even now she could not bring herself to say that name, because to say it was to admit the impossible. ‘Drew, what happened? I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything!’

  Drew said: ‘Greg knows more about it than I do. Ask him.’ And Victoria turned quickly and saw for the first time that there was someone else in the room.

  Greg Gilbert gave her a brief smile that did not reach his eyes and left his face as grim and drawn as it had been a moment before, and when he spoke it was to ask what appeared to be an entirely irrelevant question:

  ‘Did you ever know why Eden broke off the engagement between you, and married Alice Laxton?’

  ‘No,’ said Victoria, considerably taken aback. ‘I suppose he— What has it got to do with this?’

  ‘More than you would think,’ said Greg tiredly. ‘He broke it off because your mother told him that there was insanity in the family.’

  ‘Insanity! Do you mean that I——’ Victoria’s face was white.

  ‘No. Not in yours. Your grandfather married twice. But both Lady Emily’s mother and her grandfather died in lunatic asylums, and there was always some doubt about the manner in which Eden’s father met his death.’

  ‘But – but it was a car accident!’

  ‘Yes. But an odd one. Odd enough for a rumour to get around that he might possibly have engineered it himself. There was no shadow of evidence that he was abnormal, or even highly strung. But your mother heard the rumours, and because she knew all about Em’s family history she believed them. And in spite of everything that the doctors say about insanity not being hereditary, she was very much against your marrying Eden.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Victoria in a whisper. ‘I remember.’

  ‘In the end she told Eden, as the only way of stopping it. He was young and impressionable, and it came as an appalling shock to him. I gather he went off for a week by himself and drank himself silly, and decided on a heroic gesture. He wouldn’t tell you, because you would insist on disregarding it, and he felt he must do something quite irrevocable – burn his boats before he could weaken. He had met Alice Laxton a few weeks before, and through a cousin of hers he knew her history. Alice had had a bad riding accident in her early teens, and she could never have children. That was the deciding factor. He married her in a haze of self-sacrifice, youthful heroics, desperation and alcohol – and pure selfishness! And woke up to the full stupidity of what he had done when it was too late.’

  But Victoria had no interest and little sympathy to spare for Eden just then, and she brushed the information aside and demanded bluntly: ‘Do you mean that Aunt Em was mad?’

  Greg said: ‘No; she was sane enough. But she loved Flamingo too much and made a god out of it, and she had meant to found a dynasty: a Kenya dynasty. When she realized that Alice could never have children it meant only one thing to her: that there would be no heir to Flamingo. She had a shrewd suspicion that Eden was still in love with you, and she thought you were the right kind of girl for Kenya – as Alice was not! I think the seeds of the idea must have been in her mind for a long time.’

  Victoria said: ‘But the – poltergeist. They were her things. The things she liked best. She couldn’t have done that!’

  ‘Oh, yes she could. Not the first time. That was the cat, who had chased a bird round the drawing-room. But it gave her an idea for an alibi – that and the rumour that “General Africa” was hiding somewhere in the Naivasha area – and she decided to use it as a smoke screen. I think too that it appealed to some twisted instinct in her. She seems to have looked upon it as a – a penance for what she intended to do. A sort of burnt offering upon the altar of Flamingo. There was too much of the fanatic in Em’s make-up: and plenty of cunning too, for she knew that if the broken things were her own personal treasures she would be the last person to be suspected of destroying them. But it must have been a small martyrdom to do it.’

  Victoria said: ‘Things, yes. But not her dog!’

  ‘Ah! The dog was a different matter. It had been her favourite, and it had switched its allegiance to Alice. She couldn’t forgive that.’

  Victoria shivered and said in a whisper: ‘You said once that the first killing was the hardest. Perhaps that was why she had to do it. To – to practise.’

  ‘It wasn’t her first killing. She’d killed her manager, Gus Abbott. We always thought that was an accident, but it seems we were wrong. Abbott lost his nerve, and when Flamingo was attacked he didn’t want to stay and fight. He wanted to save himself, and he thought he could make a break for it and hide in the garden. But to run away, and from a gang of Mau Mau, was to Em an unforgivable sin, and she apparently shot him quite deliberately. I think that afterwards it gave her a sense of power. To have done that and got away with it. Perhaps it swung the balance, and made it possible for her to plan the murder of Eden’s unsuitable wife. For she did plan it. She seized on that first accident, for which Pusser was responsible, and kept on with a series of faked ones; and at the psychological moment she sent for you. It had given her a good excuse for doing so.’

  Victoria said: ‘She sent for me because my mother had died!’

  ‘No, she didn’t. If it had been that, she would have sent for you six months earlier. She sent for you because her plans were working out, and she murdered Alice just as soon as you were due to leave England and could not turn back. If she’d done it earlier, you wouldn’t have come, would you?’

  ‘No,’ said Victoria slowly.

  ‘Because of Eden. Yes, she knew that. You thought it was safe to come because he was married. But by the time you arrived here he would be free, and she was banking on his marrying you.’

  Victoria went over to the window seat and sat down on it, staring out at the green lawns and the placid lake, and presently she said without turning her head:

  ‘There are so many things I don’t understand. The piano. Gilly Markham. Were there two records of the concerto? I found one, you know. It was in the false bottom of a hat box in Eden’s room. I – I thought it must mean that he was the poltergeist, and that he’d kept it to blackmail her with.’

  ‘Did you? That’s irony, if you like! Em didn’t know that. She said you told her that you’d found something, and you must leave at once, or go to the police. She went straight to Eden’s room and realized that you’d been at the cupboard, and knew what it was that you had found. She thought it meant that you knew everything. That was why you had to be killed. She told us a great deal before she died. I think she was afraid that we might suspect Eden, and she had to clear him.’

  ‘Then there were two records!’

  ‘No. Only one. She needed it to manufacture that alibi, and she couldn’t bear to destroy it. She smashed another one instead. One long-playing record looks much like another when it’s in bits, and no one bothered to piece it together to read the label. She had the whole thing worked out by then. She went off ostensibly to shoot a buck, but actually to ensure that she had a good excuse for getting bloodstained – which was a point that had escaped me. And when she came back she sent Alice ove
r to the Markhams’, put a house-coat over her stained clothes and started to play the piano. And when she’d got rid of Zacharia she put on the recording instead, removed the house-coat and went out to meet Alice …

  ‘She killed Alice with a panga in order to bolster up the “General Africa” angle, and she came back to the house and dropped it, with a piece of twine round the handle, into the rainwater tank outside her window. Then she came back to her room, took off her stained clothes, put on the house-coat again, and went back to the drawing-room where she was found by Zacharia, still playing the piano, half an hour later. After that it was easy. She removed the record, took it back to its hiding place, stopped to pick up her stained clothes and see them put into the boiler – Majiri did most of the washing at night – and went out to search for Alice.’

  Victoria said: ‘But the cushion! Why should she have needed that?’

  ‘She didn’t. That was a mistake. Mine, as much as anyone’s! That cushion threw me right off beam, and incidentally frightened the life out of Mabel! Apparently there had been six of those cushions sold at some charity bazaar, and Mabel had bought two; one of which had disappeared only about ten days ago. Ken says he took it on a picnic on the lake and lost it overboard, but Mabel began to add two and two together and make it eighteen.’

  ‘Then why was it there?’

  ‘Someone had left it on the verandah rail by the rainwater tank, and Em knocked it off and it fell against the panga and got badly stained. It couldn’t be left there with the stain on it, so she ran back with it and threw it into the bushes. It was the best she could do, and as it turned out it provided her with an alibi that she had never even thought of – which is why she took another with her when she went out to meet you! She thought she’d covered everything, but she hadn’t.’

  Victoria said: ‘You mean Kamau.’

  ‘Kamau – and Gilly Markham.’

  ‘Gilly? But he didn’t see her! He only heard her playing. He said so.’

  ‘No he didn’t. We merely jumped to the conclusion that that was what he meant. But Gilly was doing a very stupid and dangerous thing. He was letting Em know that he knew the difference between her playing and Toroni’s. Gilly knew quite well when Em put on the recording of the concerto. And he wanted that job at Rumuruti and thought he could blackmail her into giving it to him. He should have known better.’

  Victoria said in a whisper: ‘Then – then that was her too.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. It was a fairly easy job I gather, and done in the way I had outlined – She carried a dead puff adder to the picnic inside her cushion. But Mabel threw a spanner into the works by hiding the clasp knife, and Hector by palming the iodine bottle.’

  ‘But why?’ demanded Victoria. ‘Why should they have done that?’

  ‘Because they both knew that Gilly hadn’t died from snake-bite, and that Ken had been hanging about Flamingo on the evening that Alice was murdered, hoping to see her, and that Gilly knew it. They also knew that Ken had quite a collection of poisoned arrows – they are a dam’ sight too easy to come by in this country! And the knife was Ken’s. Hector had borrowed it earlier in the day. Mabel threw it into the lake, and Hector apparently did the same thing with the iodine bottle because it had come out of Mabel’s pocket. They both seem to have acted on a silly spur-of-the-moment panic.’

  ‘But it wasn’t Ken’s knife!’ said Victoria. ‘It was Eden’s. Or rather, his father’s. It’s here. In the office. I found it.’

  Greg did not show much interest. He said: ‘Did you? Eden said it was somewhere around, but he couldn’t remember what he’d done with it. It had been lost; which was why Em said she’d taken it to the picnic, and described it in detail. She thought it wouldn’t turn up again, and she’d realized by then that no one thought Gilly’s death was an accident, so that laying claim to it made it look as though she were shielding someone. It was quite a good line in double bluff, when you come to think of it. Em was a good poker player.’

  ‘I suppose she killed Kamau too,’ said Victoria, looking very white and sick. ‘She went out shooting that evening too, after Mrs Markham had been over. Like – like she did that other time; and last night. Did she kill him?’

  ‘Yes. And it was poetic justice, as it happened. Em thought she knew a lot; but she didn’t know that she had killed the man who half the security forces in the country have been hunting for years. Kamau was “General Africa”.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Drew, startled. ‘Are you sure of that, Greg? How on earth do you know?’

  ‘Wambui told us,’ said Greg. ‘She knew. And so did old Zacharia. In fact you’ll probably find that there’s hardly a Kikuyu from here to Nairobi who didn’t know it, but they kept their mouths shut. They were frightened stiff of that man. Specially after he’d killed his only real rival, “Brigadier” Gitahi, and actually collected the Government reward for doing so!’

  Greg looked from Victoria to Drew and back again, and said ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, Miss Caryll. If it hadn’t been for Wambui, you’d probably have gone the same way as Alice. It was Wambui who knifed your aunt. She’d been laying for her. She said Kamau had told her that it was the “Memsahib Mkubwa” who had killed the small memsahib, and she was sure that she had also killed Kamau; and now he was avenged. I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do about that one. Technically, she ought to hang for murder; but actually she saved your life. We didn’t hear until pretty late that you had tried to ring Drew, and we wouldn’t have got here in time.’

  ‘And – and if you hadn’t, you would have thought it was someone else,’ said Victoria in an almost inaudible voice. ‘Eden, or Mrs Markham, or one of the Brandons. Or an African.’

  Greg shook his head. ‘Not this time. The pattern was becoming too plain and she wouldn’t have got away with it again. Also I think Mrs Markham had tumbled to it at last. It seems that Em had told her that she was going to send you over to get some account books that were of no immediate interest. And Em had asked Alice to pick some flowers too: the knoll was out of sight of the house. I think Lisa guessed.’

  Victoria nodded, remembering that curious interview in the Markhams’ drawing-room and how it had seemed to her that Lisa was deliberately delaying her – until it got darker. Lisa who had loved Eden, and been driven frantic by jealousy.

  A car drew up outside the house and they could hear voices on the verandah. Greg Gilbert looked at his watch and said: ‘That will be for me. I must go.’

  He turned to Victoria and said: ‘I’m afraid you’re going to find that there are a bad two or three days ahead of you, and a lot of police procedure to be got through before you can put all this behind you and try and forget it. But I’ve promised Drew that I’ll leave you alone until tomorrow. Goodbye.’

  He went out of the room, closing the door behind him, and Victoria was silent for a long time, twisting her hands in her lap and staring before her.

  She said at last: ‘You thought it might be her, didn’t you.’

  Drew did not answer for a moment or two, and she turned to look up at him.

  ‘I – wondered,’ said Drew slowly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. A lot of trivial things. But they added up. The first time was when Kamau had disappeared. Even Greg thought that he had just made a bolt for the Reserve, but when Em spoke of him she used the past tense. As though he were dead.’

  ‘Was that all?’

  ‘No. She couldn’t stop talking about the things she had done. Remember the times she accused herself of killing Alice – and Gilly? She put it in such a way that we didn’t take it seriously. But it was interesting. And then suddenly she said something that was more than merely interesting, and I began to wonder again. She quoted something from Macbeth; do you remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Victoria. ‘Something about if she had died before, she would have lived long enough. I didn’t know it was from Macbeth.’

  ‘Had I but died an hour before this chance
, I had liv’d a blessèd time’, quoted Drew. ‘Macbeth says that, when having murdered Duncan, the murder is discovered. I was interested in the workings of Em’s mind; and I didn’t like it. I was afraid for you then, and I began to consider seriously the possibility of Em being the murderer. I went to see Greg, which was why I was out when you telephoned. I was at his office until about six, and when I rang my house to say that I’d be back late I was told that the new memsahib from Flamingo had wanted to speak to me. I knew it must be you, and that you wouldn’t have done that unless you had been frightened.’

  Victoria nodded without speaking, and turned to look out of the window again; and presently Drew asked a question that he had asked her once before in that room: ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Eden,’ said Victoria, as she had said then. ‘Drew, you don’t mind about Eden, do you?’

  ‘Do I have to?’ asked Drew.

  ‘No,’ said Victoria, ‘Not any more.’

  She did not turn her head, but she groped for his hand, and finding it, held it to her cheek; and he felt the wetness of it and knew that she was crying: for Eden and Alice – and Em.

  Outside on the drive a car started up and drove away with an impatient blare on the horn. Greg and the police had gone, and the house was quiet again. But there was no longer any awareness in its silence. The tension and the trouble that had filled it had departed from it at last. It had ceased to be a Graven Image demanding sacrifices, for its High Priestess was dead, and it was only a pleasant, rambling house whose windows looked out across green gardens to the wide beauty of Lake Naivasha and all the glory of the Rift Valley.

  ALSO BY M. M. KAYE

  FICTION

  The Far Pavilions

  Shadow of the Moon

  Trade Wine

  Death in Zanzibar

  Death in Cyprus

  Death in Kashmir

  Death in Berlin

  Death in the Andamans

  The Ordinary Princess (for children)

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY